I was at Nick’s book launch at Union Chapel in Highbury on Tuesday (2 Sep) night and managed to get a chance for a quick catch up at his book signing. Nick had recently generously donated towards my Mt Fuji climb in aid of the Paddy Ashdown Forum and I had wanted to thank him for that too.
His new and rather timely book is entitled: “How to Save the Internet – The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict”. Moderated in the style of a fire-side chat by former Telegraph journalist, Kamal Ahmed, Nick advocated against fragmentation of internet. We are living in an age where google has become a verb, more than a hundred billion messages are sent every day on WhatsApp alone, and the open, borderless internet has become integral to everyone’s lives.
Yet there is this “Power Paradox” – though the internet has empowered individuals and helped small businesses around the world – it has also concentrated power in the hands of a few tech giants. What became more worrying particularly after Trump’s re-election was seeing an incursion of the likes of Elon Musk into the political sphere, unelected and unaccountable. Nick had put in place an oversight board during his time, since removed at Meta with a much lighter touch.
Currently US has the lead on AI with its huge data pool requiring enormous investments into data centres, investments which British and European companies seem unable to compete in. But the shock came with the China’s Deep Seek that caught up with a much shorter lead time and smaller outlay. And the mindset and rhetoric now appear to be similar to the time of the Cold War, of US vs China in the race for domination.
Issues that came up in the audience Q & A ranged from regulation of the internet platforms (like a public utility), to the use of Ed tech, to the unseemly exploitation of resources including water and rare earths. I had in me a burning question relating to the U-turn made on DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) under Trump 2.0 and potential biases built into the AI algorithms, but was sadly not called. There was during the course of evening a straw poll in room of “boosters” (pro AI) vs “gloomers” (sceptics). To my surprise the boosters won by a show of hands! But perhaps the audience was self-selective.
* Merlene is a Director of Paddy Ashdown Policy and Research Forum Limited and editor of the PAF’s publications on “The Rise of China” and “The Five Decade Journey of EU-ASEAN Relations”.
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31 Comments
Nick Clegg the comeback kid ? With all due respect, and bearing in mind 2015, I rather hope not.
Thank you Merlene Emerson. You along with Adam Robertson (in Defence of Nick, LDV 28th May) have both confirmed my worst fears. That Nick Clegg will be given the blue carpet treatment for his return to the party. It will be without me. I will be taking my vote and my support elsewhere.
I agree with David Raw.
Tony/Cumbria. I am confident that the vast majority of party members want no truck with Nick Clegg or Cleggism. I won’t forget where he led us into ultimately. But we are Liberals. If a few people want to listen to him promoting his book, who are we to gainsay them. That doesn’t mean we want him to play any future role in the party
Mick Taylor: I couldn’t agree with you more. Not just on this subject but on very many others!! Your contribution is invaluable. Indeed people should be able to if they want to, listen to him promoting his book and share that. I sincerely apologise to Merlene too.
There is plenty about which I’m prepared to be critical in respect of Nick Clegg, but a) a lot of what we got positively done in government was better policy, if not generally better politics, than a lot of what the other lot and the other other lot manage and b) I’m generally more yellow than orange, but parties need at least two wings, and it is beneath us to erase our recent history in the way both wings of both other main parties do. He’s a bright guy with experience and insight.
I’m happy for Nick Clegg to flog his book and talk about AI, meta etc. But what worries me is that he’ll be asked questions about where the Liberal Demoicrats are now, what he would do etc. How long can he keep deflecting these questions?
We really don’t want to be reminded about tuition fees, the coalition and the 2015 catastrophe. It took us 10 years to get past that and rebuild & revive to surpass the number of MPs we had in the 1997-2010 period, so beware of the ghost of Leaders past!
Hopefully he will join the Tories
I enjoy hearing Nick on the airwaves again. He comes over as enthusiastic, insightful and optimistic. I am also grateful for his service during the Coalition and ensuring that Liberal policies came to fruition after many, many years out of government.
Thanks Merlene for keeping us up to date with Nick Clegg’s return to the UK, after his years with Meta/Facebook in ‘The Valley’. I don’t detect any motivation from Nick to become involved with the Lib Dems. So we will no doubt have benefit of his wisdom on the tech giants and perhaps steps away from monopolisation in the West and state-backed competition from China. Will Nick campaign against misuse of AI, and misuse of ‘consumer data’; and for example the dangers of handing over all NHS data to shadowy US organisations of questionable state-linked heritage? We shall see.
“We really don’t want to be reminded about tuition fees, the coalition and the 2015 catastrophe”
Maybe, but it’s politically naive to think our political opponents will oblige. Much more sensible (as William Wallace suggested here in a post a few weeks ago) is to be prepared to defend our record – which is that we were part of a sensible and competent government (remember those?) in which we pushed though liberal measures and kept the Tories more or less sane.
A response along the lines of “we wish the coalition hadn’t happened and we weren’t very liberal then anyway” (as some here seem to want to say) won’t cut it; and the second part isn’t correct.
Anyone who thought the party would never go into collation with the Tories in 2010 wasn’t paying paying attention; and Nick Clegg’s involvement with the Orange Book at the time of his election to the leadership was well known. His opponent was Chris Holme (another contributor) and if I recall correctly there was no other candidate (Orange Book contributor or not) able to gain the support of the necessary number of MPs. It’s also worth recalling other leaders who contributed: Vince Cable and Ed Davey, and of course Jo Swinson was a member of the Coalition government as well.
Given all this it’s pretty brave to say “the vast majority of party members want no truck with Nick Clegg or Cleggism”
.
@ Tristan Ward ” His opponent was Chris Holme”……. please get it right, Tristan. It was Chris Huhne.
As for, “We were part of a sensible and competent government (remember those?) in which we pushed though liberal measures and kept the Tories more or less sane”, this is highly debatable and something the electorate gave a clear verdict on in 2015.
At that time, I stood down from being a five times elected Liberal/Lib Dem Councillor to become Chair of a Trussell Trust Foodbank. Why ?
As a CAB adviser I saw things which embarrassed me. Foodbank use in the UK increased significantly between 2010 and 2015 due to the government’s austerity measures and welfare ‘reforms’. The Trussell Trust, saw its food parcel distribution rise from approximately 61,000 in 2010/11 to over 1 million by 2014/15. The surge was driven by factors including benefit delays, the roll-out of Universal Credit, benefit sanctions, and the “bedroom tax”, which left many households struggling to afford food.
I agree with David Raw
I am pained to see such vitriol heaped on poor young (well, he still looks it) Nick Clegg. Remember, the policy of government austerity was “flavour of the month ” supported also by the Labour party (seems it still is). Protests from those of us who believed the party was betraying the principles of Beveridge and Keynes (my blog is called keynesianliberal.blogspot .com and appeared throughout the colaiton , and still does – occasionally) failed to convince the majority of the party. I think it is likely that Nick now sees the light, as do most commentators do now
And he is a good communicator. If he’s willing to come and heop us, great.
Continued.
Remind people of the good things we achieved in the coalition (I have a list somewhere)
And when tuition fees are raised, remind people that it was Labour who first introduced tuition fees at £1000 up front per year, having said they wouldn’t, then tripled them to £3000 per year, up front, having said they wouldn’t. The coalition abolished up-front fees and replaced them with what is effectively a graduate tax, payable only if and when the graduate receives a sufficiently high salary. Squash the concept of crippling graduate debt.
Zuckerberg has sadly had to let Nick Clegg go. Obviously, that’s because Trump still thinks Clegg is a dangerous liberal. Trump’s judgment on such matters, like many others, is of course not terribly well-informed!
@Peter Wrigley: “Poor” Nick Clegg???? Good grief.
More seriously. I’m always interested to hear Nick Clegg speak, but like others I will always struggle to forgive him for his political naivety and ultimate failure as LD leader. His identification now with the party is unlikely to be helpful given his (very well rewarded) role as moral cover for Meta’s part in the rise of populist divisive politics, Trump Brexit et al. Not a good look I’m afraid.
“Trump still thinks Clegg is a dangerous liberal. Trump’s judgment on such matters, like many others, is of course not terribly well-informed”
For once Trump is right.
More importantly those who regret the coalition are able to suggest a politically viable alternative taking into account the numbers at the time. There was no alternative stable majority in the House of Commons, and the financial crisis was well underway.
We could have offered confidence and supply to either Tories or Labour. Labour was unpopular and exhausted. The Tories had more MPs. In either case the likely scenario would have been another election within 12 months. The Tories would have asked for a mandate for “strong and stable” government in the mist of financial crisis. We would have been labelled as not serious about power at a time of crisis. I expect the Tories would have got their mandate as the Labour party fought its post Blair battles and we would have suffered great electoral damage.
I think there were two important mistakes in the coalition for us. Obviously tuition fees – an own goal of unbelievable foolishness that polluted the brand. Hats off to the MPs who voted against it and those who resigned from government to do so. And – not winning the PR referendum. One was under our control, the other not.
If Clegg comes back on board the Liberal Democrats, all of a sudden with their new leader the Green Party will be looking more attractive.
The first point I would want to make is that there is a difference between being a contributer to the Orange Book, and being a subscriber to the Orange Book ideology. The ideology came from 2 contributers, Paul Marshall and David Laws. David Laws wanted to reduce the size of the state to 35% of GDP. He didn’t say that in the Orange Book, but the chapter by Paul Marshall certainly hinted at that. So of course Laws was perfectly willing to support austerity policies within the Coalition and it was the choice of Nick Clegg to make him chief secretary to the treasury.
The second point I would make is that a chief motivation for Nick Clegg is to make money. He took the very well paid job at Facebook (now Meta), and since leaving it is very striking how he will criticise politicians for not standing up to Trump, but he himself will not say a word against Zuckerberg who is openly sucking up to Trump with his absurd “male energy” fixation. Of course if you want to move on to another well paid job, you do not criticise your previous boss.
On the issue of DEI in AI, what happens is that AI models learn from the biases in the data generated by humans. So the Large Language Models (LLMs) learn from various sources, including Wikipedia, books, newspapers, academic papers – a whole number of sources that are available online.
In most cases this is taken into account and efforts are made to mitigate human biases.
But now with Trump 2.0 and the backlash against DEI – and in addition the alternative reality that the populist world inhabits, attempts are being made to build in the opposite biases. This backfired in the case of Elon Musk’s LLM known as Grok, which in some instances supported the Nazis. Musk reckons he has fixed that now.
For those still on Twitter it is interesting to response to a far right consipracy theorist tweeter and ask Grok to fact check the conspiracy theories. Grok has not yet been trained sufficiently to justify the alternative realities that Musk signs up to.
@Tristan Ward “not winning the PR referendum”
The mistake was surely allowing a PR referendum with PR not on the ballot paper.
@Tristan Ward “not winning the PR referendum”
There was no referendum on PR.
There was a referendum on AV, which is not PR.
Had the referendum on AV passed, there might subsequently have been debate on holding a referendum on PR or even any actual referendum on it.
Instead though, the two larger parties happily mis-represent the result as the electorate overwhelmingly voting for FPTP, even though no question about FPTP was on the ballot.
Not sure why some people here are still raising the university tuition fees here.
The LDs need to stop being defensive about that since the two obvious replies are:
a) the LDs were a minority party in a coalition government and there was no majority in that coalition about reducing or scrapping the uni fees, and,
b) both the Conservatives and Labour have had large majorities since then and neither has ever expressed the slightest interest in debating reducing or scrapping the uni fees, much less doing so, so they are the parties that people should be focusing their ire on.
Lastly, I would imagine that most people who were in uni back in 2010 or so have other more pressing issues to focus on today than the issue of uni fees way back then.
“David Laws wanted to reduce the size of the state”
A perfectly reasonable and liberal thing to want. Liberals like to limit power, including state power; and two ways of limiting state power are not giving the state too much to do, and not giving the state too much money. Gladstone was similar.
The political trick is to be able to deliver better/more services at a time when the public believes it is over taxed, and that much government spending is “wasted”. In addition, growth is anaemic (not to mention often environmentally damaging) and public borrowing is historically high.
It’s certainly much easier not to be in power and not to have responsibility.
Tristan Ward “Liberals like to limit power, including state power”.
If you apply austerity and cut back on services and benefits when in government, then the people who are forced to use food banks as a consequence of this will have no power whatsoever.
David
“the people who are forced to use food banks as a consequence of this will have no power whatsoever”
Yes. Somehow one has to reconcile the tensions pulling in different directions. Universal basic income or similar is one solution. Failing that (because the economics and politics of UBI are difficult) growth so the pie increases so as to be able to pay for benefits, and better than benefits jobs at an acceptable wage/salary.
@Tristan Ward
Yes we could but it would not have worked out for us any more than full-blown Coalition would. We are not the DUP, we cannot “sell” our support to the highest bidder in exchange for a bung. Confidence and supply for us would have meant all the disadvantages of being “in government” (as it would still have been perceived) with none of the benefits.
In any case the Coalition rarely comes up on the doorstep nowadays, and when it does it’s from people with an anti-LibDem agenda. Partisans still make a big deal about it, but partisans of other parties are hardly our target voters.
“we cannot “sell” our support to the highest bidder in exchange for a bung”
I spend time and money supporting the party so that we (and in particular our members elected to public office) can deliver liberal stuff and prevent illiberal stuff happening. I’d be pretty upset if they supported another party in government without getting a good wadge of liberal policy put in place; and if you want to call that a “bung” that’s OK with me. It is the business of a political party to seek and exercise power; and and the end of the day someone has to provide government and make decisions. (Apologies to all the anarchists out there.)
Of course there are some people it would be impossible to do do business with. We might want to do some hard thinking about the implications of a hung parliament where Farage’s gang are the largest party and how they might be stopped.
As to the collation – it does come up on the doorsteps occasionally for me, but most of the comment I see seems to come (as here) from party members/supporters telling everyone how terrible it was and donning sackcloth and ashes without offering an alternative that delivered government.
@Tristan Ward: By “bung” I mean something like the wad of cash that was handed to Northern Ireland in return for DUP propping up Theresa May’s government. The point is that the DUP is a small regional party that doesn’t even stand in (mainland) Great Britain. Therefore it is not electorally in competition with the Tories and has no interest in being in government. Its voters are tribal and were not going to vote Sinn Fein because they were dissatisfied with the size of the bung that Arlene Foster brought back. They also don’t care that much what happens outside their backyard. Therefore the DUP could agree to support most of what the Tories wanted to do, in return for a subsidy package from which its potential voters would benefit, without much electoral consequence for itself.
Compare and contrast with the position of the Lib Dems who stand candidates in every seat in GB and have to answer to the same electorate as the two big parties.
………..Sir Nick Clegg, the come-back kid!……..
I, too, agree with David Raw, Nick Collins et al ..
BTW.. I listened to a recent interview by Nick Clegg; he defended the efforts of on-line companies to protect the vulnerable, although, he conceded that they could do more..